


Guilt

by rabidbinbadger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mark of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-29
Updated: 2014-04-29
Packaged: 2018-01-21 05:34:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1539551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidbinbadger/pseuds/rabidbinbadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mark is ambivalent about torturing its victims. It takes delight in torturing its host.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Guilt

He awakes to an angular pain in his neck. He doesn’t want to open his eyes because he knows what it means. It means he didn’t fall asleep in a bed last night. It means he collapsed, somewhere. After doing…something.

He doesn't remember what quite yet. Has an inkling that he doesn’t want to. Maybe he was drinking. He clings to the hope that he was drinking. It would be better than... other things. He tries to divert his thoughts, channel them down an alley distant from the knowledge of what those other things really are. He tries to think about his drinking instead. He is vaguely aware that it often reaches problematic levels. Sometimes this worries him, scratches at him, a half remembered problem. He drinks to forget, like a lot of people. He has a lot to forget, more than most. Does that excuse him? He doesn’t think so.

There’s a weight pressed against his back, heavy and sticky. He wants to ignore it for a bit longer. He knows what it is, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He can’t stay here forever, though. His meandering, guilty escape is cut through with Sammy’s voice. He’s long since stopped calling him Sammy out loud. He’s not a boy anymore, he’s a brute, a giant. The name Sammy doesn’t fit him but there it still hangs, in the spaces between words. A reminder of what has passed.

He gives in, he opens his eyes. They gum together for a moment, grant him a few extra seconds. He’s grateful. When they unstick they reveal crusted red-brown smears on the wall, on the ground. He’s been out for a while, then. He grunts, stands, surveys the scene. Surveys the slaughter. There are no charcoaled wings on the ground, there’s no noticeable tang of sulphur. He tries not to think about the implications of that.

He glances at his arm, to where the Mark disfigures him. It pulses, oozes a dizzying contentment. A job well done. A slaughter well executed. It leaks hunger too, a warning. This was not enough. This will never be enough. It might be digesting its most recent meal, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t clamour for another.

He tries for a brief second to use it as an excuse. It wasn’t him. It was the Mark, his childhood, his pain. It was necessary. It was anything but him. These thoughts last less than a second. He knows the kind of person he is. This was all him. He knows that the reason his mouth aches is because it was slashed with a rictus grin while he tore people apart. The Mark found him because he was worthy of it. Found him because he enjoys slaughter. The Mark does not make killers out of the innocent. The Mark needs a solid foundation of murder to rest upon. 

He ignores his brother’s voice and he walks out of the room, out of the building. The smell of blood lingers and he knows he’s coated from head to foot, that he needs to clean himself up, wash it away. He doesn’t want to. He wants to carry it like penance. The Mark wants to carry it like a warning. This is who you are now, this is what we do. You can wash it off, but you can’t wash me off. We are one.

A police car pulls over. The Mark roils under his skin. He wonders why it’s letting him do this, letting him get stopped and searched and bundled into the back of a car. An officer deliberately bangs his head against the door as he’s being pushed into the back seat. A casual burst of police brutality. This, he realises, is why the Mark let him. It let him because it knows, it sees the potential for violence in other people, saw a chance here. It doesn’t yet have the hold over him to just lash out. It needs his rage first.

The pain sparks. The Mark flexes. It flows through him, cracks his knuckles. Tilts his head. Pulls his mouth back into a grin. His hands lash apart, the cuffs snap. He goes for the throat of the nearest officer, digs his nails in, gouges out flesh. He snaps this first officer’s neck as the second reaches for her gun. The Mark stops luxuriating in torn sinew and muscle, it settles fully in his limbs, flings him from the car.

He wraps himself around the second officer in a crushing parody of an embrace. Bones crunch and splinter. He bites, chews a hole in her cheek. His blunt, human teeth are not particularly effective. He could do more damage with a knife. He likes the feel though, the gore dribbling down his chin and into his throat. He swallows it down. He won’t be able to wash that off when this is over. It’s inside him and soon it’ll be dissolved, become part of his fuel, his flesh. 

The Mark is ambivalent about torturing its victims. It takes delight in torturing its host. It resents the control he still attempts to have. Resents that soon it will be reduced, however briefly, back to a nagging, vicious itch on an arm. Dean belongs to the Mark and the Mark needs him to accept that.


End file.
